Roman Stoicism: Words to Live (and Die) By

Furthermore, since wealth, all manner of physical pleasure, and even our very lives and the lives of our loved ones are fleeting, it is folly to invest our happiness in them, for all of them are beyond our control and will be taken from us at some time or another. The best way to regard external things, therefore, is to be thankful for the time we have with them and to graciously give them up when the time arrives

it is foolish to place one’s happiness in external things, whatever they may be. This means that true happiness lies not within anything external, but entirely within our very selves.

only those things that fall within our control have the power to harm us, and then only if we let them

we need only trouble ourselves with those things that are within our power to control; all other things we must leave to nature and God.

For the Stoics, to live one’s life according to nature means to accept nature as it exists, and that to struggle against nature is the source of all human sorrow

To be happy, then, we must learn to control the things we can, and to accept the things we cannot

Life is neither happy nor safe when one always has to wear a mask

To live happily is the same thing as to live according to Nature

Sextus, when the day was over and he had betaken himself to rest, [used] to inquire of his spirit: ‘What bad habit of yours have you cured today? What vice have you checked? In what respect are you better?’ Anger will cease, and become more gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before the judgment seat.

We are bad men, living among bad men: there is only one thing which can afford us peace, and that is to agree to forgive one another